Reality Is Fluid
by StarSword-C
Summary: Two-parter written for Literary Challenge 64 on the STO forums. While the USS Bajor is testing a new sensor array on the Bajoran wormhole, something goes drastically wrong and Captain Kanril Eleya becomes swept up in the intrigues of the Prophets as well as intrigues closer to home.
1. Part I

**Reality Is Fluid, Part I**

_And the battle's just begun_  
_There's many lost, but tell me who has won_  
_The trench is dug within our hearts_  
_And mothers, children, brothers, sisters_  
_Torn apart_

_Sunday, Bloody Sunday_  
_Sunday, Bloody Sunday_

_How long..._  
_How long must we sing this song_  
_How long, how long..._

— "Sunday Bloody Sunday", U2

"This project ushers in a new era of cooperation between Cardassia and Bajor. We are healing the wounds of the Occupation and the Dominion War, blah blah blah." Okay, that last part was me.

I hate this. I hate having to wear my dress whites. I hate having to sit still for pompous, overweight, overpaid politicos like First Minister Arvel Selan when the Bajor Cup is going on. (Seriously, I've got a hundred credits on Tomis Lee in the quarter-finals and they're playing right now!) I hate getting pulled off more important duties like the Jenolan patrol to listen to these verbosities. I hate this insane idea for invasive scans of the Celestial Temple. Actually, I'm not alone on that last one: the Vedek Assembly, Kai Kira, _and_ Captain Kurland and Admiral Marconi all filed formal protests all the way up to the Federation Council. One or two of the more conservative vedeks actually threatened Arvel with excommunication if he let the project go forward (although that was vetoed, unfortunately).

Most of all, I hate being forced to choose between being Bajoran and being a Starfleet officer. I've been ordered by my legal chain of command to take part in this thing, because it'll supposedly look good for the Federation to have a Bajoran captain with a fifteen percent-Bajoran crew, commanding a ship _named_ USS _Bajor_, testing out this new trans-temporal/planar sensor array, and though I've protested to as many people as I can think of, at this point it's basically either do it or resign.

Supposedly I'm representative of some overpaid analyst's idea of the "new Bajor" since I'm part of the post-Dominion War generation, and it's in my file that I'm not particularly religious (a "Christmas and Easter Christian", Warragul calls it, although I think that's exaggerating). But though I may not put much stock in all the prophecies and other gibberish I'm still Bajoran and I still worship the Prophets. At the same time, objectively I know these people know what they're doing and that therefore it's not really important enough to resign my commission over. So I'm stuck.

Oh, good, that damn windbag's finally shut up. I make a mental note to vote for, well, whoever the _phekk_ is running against him in the next election, and force myself to pay attention to Admiral Marconi, commander of the Beta Ursae Fleet Area. Poor man looks about as pleased to see the Cardassians here as the rest of Bajor who listen to the news. "… We are, _ahem_, very pleased to have with us Professor Atani Dukat, representing the Cardassian Science Ministry, who will be providing the briefing."

What, Castellan Lang couldn't be bothered to attend in person? Shows how important this stupidity _really_ is to Cardassian-Bajoran reconciliation. "Thank you, Admiral. I'm honored to be here on Deep Space 9, where so many momentous events during my childhood took place." Yeah, I just bet you are. Then I realize she's looking at me. "And I'm humbled to be able to meet a Bajoran in a Federation uniform, look her in the eye, and be able to tell her, I'm sorry. For _everything_ my people, and especially my father, the late, unlamented Gul Skrain Dukat, did to _both_ your peoples."

Oh. _That_ Dukat. Then the rest of the sentence percolates through my brain. "Um. Uh, thank you, I guess."

"Small consolation, I'm sure. It's going to take a lot longer than forty years to heal those wounds. I'm just hoping to contribute a little."

The briefing doesn't tell me anything I don't already know. The project, codenamed Schrödinger's Butterfly for some reason, came out of a couple of incursions by the Terran Empire in the so-called mirror universe last year. As best I understand it it's an attempt to detect and observe alternate realities close enough to us that the Celestial Temple, what everyone else calls the Bajoran wormhole, can connect to them. My eyes pretty much glazed over after that. All I know is, they want my ship, specifically, for political reasons as previously noted, and they're making modifications to the deflector dish to do it. Apparently the existing sensor arrays weren't powerful enough or something. Yeah, on a _Galaxy_-class starship. That's Starfleet Science for you: a nav deflector is for generating weird particles, not for pushing crap out of your way when you're at warp.

Captain Kurland elbows me. "Kanril, we're done."

"What? Oh. Sorry, must've dozed off." I stand and head to the door. Maybe I can catch the tail end of the springball match at Quark's.

* * *

I got lucky, managed to get to the bar in time to see Tomis Lee, a cute redhead from my home province of Kendra, body-check Ahanu Terel clean out of the ring. Part of the bar erupts in cheers and I join in. I grab barman Hadron's shirt sleeve and tell him, "Hathon hammer."

"What?"

"Hathon hammer!" I shout at him.

"Okay!"

I turn back to the game on the screen hung from the second floor railing over the dabo table, which has been shut down for the duration. Ahanu, who's a quarter Cardassian and looks it, is rubbing his shoulder and looks pissed at Tomis.

Somebody touches my shoulder. "Is this seat taken?"

I turn. It's Gaarra. "Really? You use that line on me, again?"

"It worked the first time, didn't it?"

I laugh and point a finger at him. "Don't think that just because I'm not saying 'no' that you get lucky tonight. I'm still your captain."

"Look, Eleya? Right now I just want to watch the game and get good and plastered so I don't have to think about what they're doing to my deflector dish or what the Prophets are going to think about us poking around in the Temple."

I snort. "Don't remind me. Hell, I heard Marconi went all the way up to SecDef about it. HEY! That's a foul! _Y'trel bo tava tu san yc'fel, Dakhur'etil va'yaputal!_"

"You wanna come over here and say that?" somebody from the Ahanu cheering section hollers.

"No fighting! No fighting!" Hadron yells, panicking.

"Re_lax_, Hadron, just an honest insult match between folk. I would but I'm busy drinking over here!" I yell back at the tough guy. I hear somebody in that direction burst out laughing and Gaarra sniggers next to me.

"Is this seat taken?"

This time it's that Cardassian woman, Atani Dukat. "That seems to be a popular line around here. Go ahead. He's got some kanar."

"Thanks, but no thanks. I've never liked it much. Bartender, Samarian sunset please."

I sneak a closer look at her as she sits down to my right. Graying black hair tied back with a dark red ribbon, hooked nose, scale ridge around the eyes isn't too prominent. The eyes are the right color for that monster but everything else is way off. "I take after my mother, if that's what you're wondering, Captain," she says without looking at me.

"Didn't mean to stare."

"It's all right. Not every day you meet someone who's related to an infamous war criminal."

"I didn't—"

She sighs and rests her head in her left hand, looking at me askance. "You didn't have to. I know that look. Captain Kanril, I'm sure you won't believe me but I really did mean what I said during the briefing."

"Look, Professor," Gaarra says, "I get what you're trying to do, but you're focused on the political aspects of this and missing the religious side."

"No, I'm not, actually." She sits up and turns to face us as Hadron comes back with our drinks. "You're worried about the wormhole aliens, the Prophets. I don't agree with your beliefs but I have the utmost respect for them. I actually argued against Schrödinger's Butterfly to the Ministry for months but I was ignored." She takes a sip of her drink. "I finally volunteered to run the project when it became clear it was going to happen whether I liked it or not, so best to do it myself so I know it gets done right. I imagine that's sort of why you two are staying on."

"Partly," I admit.

"See? We can agree that it's a bad idea, at least." The Cardassian raises her glass. "Truce?"

"Yeah, all right. Truce." The three of us clink glasses and drink.

She turns to look at the springball match. "So who's winning?" she asks, changing the subject.

"Ahanu's up one because the referee's going blind," Gaarra answers, "but Tomis has time to close it up. Yep, there he goes, wow!" The bar erupts in cheers again.

Then the buzzer sounds. Tie game, meaning sudden death. Ahanu serves, Tomis returns, Ahanu rams him and sends it high, Tomis jumps and swats it down, Ahanu rushes forward but his return is out of the ring and the match is over! The cheering is deafening and I grab Gaarra's head and kiss him.

* * *

"Everything ready?" I ask Gaarra. It's 1032 hours and he's supervising the last of the installation.

"One more connection, the stress test, and then we get to the scanning," he answers. "Hey, be careful with that!" he yells at one of the Bajorans from the Center for Science who dropped something that looked expensive.

"Sorry, Lieutenant."

"_Commander_," one of Gaarra's petty officers corrects him.

"Commander, sorry. Look, no damage. No harm, no foul, right?"

"Get it stowed, Mr. Ameno." Gaarra turns back to me with an exasperated look on his face. "Civilians."

"Don't I know it," I say with a chuckle. "Bellevue, you ready?"

"Aye, Captain," the petty responds. "Stress test coming out green across the board. We're good to go."

"Okay. Be careful, Commander."

"Hey. It's me."

I head for the turbolift and the bridge while Gaarra stays behind to monitor the deflector in person. I plop down in The Chair. "Ensign Esplin, we're ready to roll. Request clearance for departure."

"Aye, ma'am," the Saurian confirms. "DS9 Flight Control, this is USS _Bajor_, requesting clearance to launch."

"Kurland here. You're cleared to launch, _Bajor_."

"Lieutenant Park, you may begin undocking."

"Aye, Captain. Docking tube disengaged," the conn officer reports. "Umbilicals disengaged. Docking clamps retracted. We are detached. Firing starboard thrusters." The ship slides sideways ten meters. "Firing aft thrusters." The ship begins to slowly accelerate. "We are clear of the station."

"Let's hope the rest of the day goes this smoothly. Move us to the coordinates. Master Chief, is there anything coming through the wormhole?"

"Not for another three days," Master Chief Wiggin answers. "Our listening posts on the far side all read negative for ship traffic."

"Professor Dukat, your team ready?"

"We're ready," the Cardassian woman confirms from one of the secondary consoles. "By the way, Captain Kanril, can I compliment you on your science officer? Commander Riyannis really knows her astrophysics. I had a good time talking _n_-dimensional subspace mechanics with her earlier."

"Ma'am, I have no idea what you just said but I'll accept the compliment."

"Captain," Park says, "we're in position."

"All stop. Thrusters to station-keeping. Professor, you have sensor control."

"I have sensor control," she confirms. "Um, no, I don't."

"Master Chief?"

"Hang on. There, try it now."

"Thank you." She presses her intercom key. "Schrödinger's team, this is Professor Dukat. Let's do this by the book. I'm going to start with a low power scan and slowly ramp it up. Let's give it a three-second pulse, default settings. Mark." There's a faint hum through the floor as the deflector powers up. "Okay, got a good return on that one. Hm, interesting. I'm picking up a station in the same position as our Deep Space 9, but it's a Federation configuration. Okay, let's go again. 2.8 gigahertz, amplitude 12, two seconds. Mark." Hum. "That's a … Dominion alloy signature, big enough to be a Jem'Hadar battle squadron transiting the wormhole. That may be an alternate timeline where the alliance lost the war."

"Any chance they picked up the pulse?" Wiggin asks. He's getting at Rule #1 of active sensors: if you can see them, they can see you.

"There's always a chance but it's likely they wouldn't know what to do with it if they did. At least in our timeline, we know the Founders place the same restrictions on temporal research as the rest of us."

"How many more scans left in the program?" I ask.

"Six, Captain. Today's mainly for proof of concept, just to confirm that the theory works and maybe get us some hints on how to control which timeline we're looking at. Test three, 2.9 gigahertz, amplitude 13, four seconds. Mark."

And all Hell breaks loose. Sirens start shrieking and a faint jolt is conducted through the floor. "Status!" I bark.

"EPS conduit failure in Deflector Control!" an ops noncom answers. "Picking up a power surge! Controls nonresponsive!"

"Medical and damage control teams to Deflector Control!" Tess orders into her intercom. "What in the—"

On the viewscreen my worst fears are realized as a coruscating beam of golden light erupts from beneath the saucer, lancing straight out at the Celestial Temple. The wormhole erupts, blue swirl now tinged with gold. I hear Biri yell something about the wormhole's event horizon expanding but all I can do is sit there. "Prophets, what have we done?"

* * *

There's an instant of blinding light and the bridge is empty but for me. "Hello?" I stand and look around. The viewscreen is blank and snowed over with static.

"Hello," a warm voice comes from behind me.

I turn. It's a human in an old '70s-era uniform, dark skin, goatee, shaved bald. "_Ni'dal_," I breathe. "Emissary."

"The answer to your question is, nothing that wasn't intended. The Prophets play the long game, always have. You didn't do any damage to the wormhole that it won't recover from easily." He looks me up and down. "A Bajoran in a Starfleet command uniform, with captain's insignia. I didn't know if I'd ever see the day."

"I'm not the first, Emissary." It's the truth. There's been at least thirty other Bajoran COs in Starfleet by now. One of them, Kel Nola, class of '87, even died commanding a _Galaxy_-class.

"Call me Ben. No, Captain Kanril, you're not the first, but you're important to the Prophets. You, more than any of the others, are important to them. I guess they would say, 'You are of Bajor,' and it's true in more ways than one."

"Okay, so I'm important. What now?"

"Well, now you're going to fulfill Emer Dareloth's Second Prophecy. I believe it reads, 'The sky turns to water. The daughter of the valley travels in the sky. Enemies become allies to stem the coming tide.'"

Oh, lovely. "I've never put much stock in the prophecies, Emis—Captain. Even when they _do_ come true, they never come true the way anyone predicts. Hell, you yourself ran into that with Trakor's Third, or so I read. Kind of makes them hard to use as a guide to anything."

"You may not put much stock in the prophecies but the prophecies put stock in _you_." Sisko turns and waves a hand at the viewscreen, which shifts to show the springball match I was watching earlier. "The Prophets play the long game, as I said, but they also have to allow for free will or the game breaks down. They're also not the only player in the springball match: this universe of ours is littered with entities of similar power."

"Are you talking about Q?"

"Q is one example. The Organians are another."

"Refresh my memory, please?"

"They enforced a peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire in the 2260s that led directly to the signing of the Khitomer Accords in 2293. They haven't been active in our area of space for a long while but that could always change. But you don't need to worry about that. You need to worry about your duty to your crew. You mostly have the right idea about the prophecies: they either get fulfilled or they don't, in the course of sapient beings acting on their own. Don't try to be a great person. Just be a _good_ person, and let history make its own judgments. I'm close to out of time here—"

"'Time'? Really?"

"Unavoidable pun, I'm afraid. As I was saying, the only specific guidance I'm allowed to give you is a warning: You have a saboteur aboard."

"The Cardassians?"

"I've said as much as I'm allowed to. The Prophets piggy-backed on his plan, which compared to other attempts to destroy this place was rather pathetic. All he did was temporarily redirect the Idran system side."

"To where?"

"You'll figure it out on your own quickly enough. He's still dangerous to you and your crew, which endangers the prophecy and the Alpha Quadrant. Watch your back, Kanril Eleya."

END OF PART ONE

* * *

**Author's Notes:** This story was written for Literary Challenge #64 on the _Star Trek Online_ forums. The gist of the challenge was that your ship is being used as a testbed for a sensor array jointly developed by the Federation, Bajorans, and Cardassians, with the test site being the Bajoran wormhole. Something goes pear-shaped and gets you thrown into some unusual form of space. I get the feeling that when Captain Smirk picked that topic, s/he didn't account for the fact that one of the forum regulars has a Bajoran, Prophet-worshiping POV character, which is where the sociopolitical miniplot comes from.

I've decided from this challenge that it's fun writing Eleya when she's pissed off at the universe in general, as in the start of this chapter, and that I need to find more excuses to do it.

The other authors in the challenge thought my handling of Ben Sisko was pretty good. It's always tricky to write other people's characters and I'm glad I pulled it off, especially since Sisko's my favorite of the five captains.

I've been on a _Babylon 5_ tear lately, and Professor Dukat was inspired by the episode "The Coming of Shadows", where Emperor Turhan of the Centauri Republic tries to mend fences with the Narns by giving G'Kar a formal apology for the Centauri occupation of the Narn homeworld. It doesn't go nearly as well as Dukat's attempt, unfortunately.

The universe they detect where there's a Federation station in place of Deep Space 9 is supposed to be the novelverse timeline, where DS9 got blown up by the Typhon Pact in 2384 and replaced.

The Kel Nola that Eleya mentions was the captain of the USS _Musashi_, a GCS that the player blows up in the Klingon tutorial.


	2. Part II

**Reality Is Fluid, Part II**

A flash in my mind and I'm back on my real bridge. "What's our status?" I shout at Tess.

Biri answers instead, "Response team says an EPS conduit exploded and sent a power surge into the Butterfly modifications, and before anyone still awake could stop it the dish sent a theta-verteron beam into the wormhole! Gravity field strength spiked and pulled us in before we could compensate!"

"Casualties?"

"Six dead, eight wounded! Commander Reshek is—"

Gaarra. I'm out of the chair before she can finish the sentence and running for the turbolift. "Deflector Control!"

"Captain!" Tess yells. "Computer, hold turbolift!"

"What?" Tess walks up to me and grabs the front of my shirt through the doorway. "Let go of me, Tess."

"No," she angrily tells me, antennae twitching, storm-gray eyes flashing, "and get your head back in the game, Eleya. I warned you that I wasn't going to let your feelings for Reshek affect the well-being of this crew. Right now we don't know what the frak is going on and I need you here, on this bridge, in your chair, getting this sorted out. Otherwise I'm declaring you emotionally compromised and removing you from command in accordance with Starfleet Regulation Six-One-Nine. Do I make myself clear, _Captain_?" She lets go of my shirt.

"Sorry," I say.

She seems a little mollified by that. "Apologize to me later. Save this ship _now_."

I straighten my jacket and follow her back onto the bridge, forcing myself to focus. "Biri, where the hell are we?"

"Still in the wormhole, El! We just passed the halfway point. Structural integrity field holding steady!"

"Sensor readings are going crazy, Captain!" Professor Dukat shouts to me. "I've isolated signatures from thirty-four, no, thirty-five alternate timelines just from passive sensors!"

"Which timeline are _we_ headed to?" I yell over the noise as the _Bajor_ screams around us, battling the tidal forces threatening to pull her apart.

"We're still in our own, near as I can tell!"

"Conn, keep us centered in the normal flight path!"

Park announces, "Aye, ma'am! Should be exiting into the Idran system in five, four, three, two, one, now!"

The _Bajor_ erupts from the wormhole and shudders to a halt. The silence is sudden and deafening, broken only by the familiar, constant hum of the life-support system. "Report!" Tess orders. "Where are we?"

Biri taps at her keys. "Not the Idran system, that's for damn sure. I don't even know where to begin; I'm having trouble making sense of these readings. Master Chief, give me a cold restart of the primary sensor array if it's still working."

"No need," Wiggin says in a worried tone. "I know where we are. Optical sensors coming up now." The viewscreen turns from static to pale green. No stars, poor visibility, and some yellowish mass blurred off the starboard quarter. "We're in fluidic space, sir."

"Prophets forgive us," a Bajoran petty officer to my right mutters fearfully. "Forgive your wayward children's insult. Forgive their arrogance."

What she'd give to know what I know. I hit the intercom key on my chair arm. "All hands, all hands, this is the captain. Yellow alert. Lieutenant Korekh, please report to the bridge." I let go of the key. "Wiggin, can we get back into the wormhole?"

"No, it's like the aperture was never there in the first place. Just some leftover ripples."

"All right, getting any readings of Undine activity? Or any good hiding places nearby?"

"No Undine activity that I can pick up. And if I remember the information from Admiral Tuvok's expedition late last year, that yellow mass eighteen kilometers off the starboard bow is something like a coral reef, the local equivalent of a planetoid."

"Biri, any thoughts?"

"According to this there's a fairly large hollow cavern where we can hide the ship."

"Conn, get us there."

The turbolift slides open and the two-meter bulk of my security chief steps out. "Captain."

"My office, Dul'krah. You too, Tess." The three of us go inside. "Computer, privacy mode four."

"Eleya, what's going on?"

"Dul'krah, I want you to investigate the explosion in the deflector control room as an act of sabotage."

The big Pe'khdar's slit pupils narrow. "My team as yet has no evidence that the EPS explosion was anything other than an accident."

"The Emissary of the Prophets disagrees." Tess stares at me. "I had a vision when we were in the wormhole, Tess. I met the Emissary. He said we didn't do any permanent damage and that we have a saboteur aboard."

Dul'krah gives me a hard look. "Permission to speak freely, Captain?"

"Go ahead."

"It is … strange how much direct action your gods take with your people. Chul'teth and Vo'tak have never appeared to anyone in visions in living memory. No disrespect intended, but I am afraid I cannot accept an unverifiable vision as evidence in an investigation. I also cannot jump to conclusions in an investigation."

"You do what you have to do, but I reserve the right to tell you 'I told you so.' Get to work, Lieutenant."

"Yes, Captain." He strides out.

Tess looks at me. "That's not all Captain Sisko said, is it?"

I shake my head. "No. Apparently we're part of some plan the Prophets have. You familiar with any of the prophecies?"

"Not really, ma'am."

"Well, the one in question is Emer's Second. 'The sky turns to water. The daughter of the valley travels in the sky. Enemies become allies to stem the coming tide.'"

"Admirably vague," she comments snidely.

"Yeah, but think about it for a minute. 'The sky turns to water.' Fluidic space, anyone?"

"Yes, and you're from Priyat in the Kendra Valley, I know. But that's far from the only interpretation."

"That's more or less what I said, Tess. Don't worry, I'm taking this a little skeptically, just maybe not as skeptically as you would." The intercom chirps and I press the "accept call" key. "Kanril."

"Park here. We're in position and powered down."

"Thanks for the update. Keep passive scans running continuously, and call down to the commissary to get some food up here. We're probably going to be stuck in fluidic space for a while until the geek squad figures out how to make us a hole back to realspace without the deflector." I let go of the key and look to Tess. "Is it okay if I go check on my ops officer now, Number One?"

"I don't see why not; we're out of danger for the moment. I have the bridge."

* * *

I head down to sickbay. Corpsman Watkins meets me at the door and snaps to attention. "Captain."

"At ease, Chief. How is everyone?"

She walks inside and I follow. "Petty Officers Vilhjalmsson and Bellevue and Dr. Afyt from the Science Center have minor plasma burns. Master Chief Boepo, Lieutenant Semak, and Datel Mayal from the Cardie Ministry have worse burns and shrapnel injuries."

"What about Ga—Commander Reshek?"

Watkins leads me into the observation deck of one of the surgery rooms and gestures at the window. Six red-gowned surgeons are laboring over Gaarra, his body anesthetic-masked and motionless, tubes running into and out of his chest. "Dr. Wirrpanda just started on him. Reshek has third-degree plasma and electrical burns over 45% of his body, enough shrapnel embedded in him to set off a weapons detector, and he's lost a lot of blood." An orderly enters the surgical theatre with a Biohazard One-marked package. "That'd be the new lungs from the replicator."

"Is he going to make it?"

"He'll make it," she says in a voice that brooks no argument. "Lieutenant Wirrpanda is the finest trauma surgeon I've ever served with. He's saved people with injuries a lot worse than Reshek's. And Dr. Onas from the Center swears up and down Reshek saved her life. He tackled her out of the way as that conduit blew and took the whole blast on his back." She touches my shoulder. "You love him, don't you?" It's not a question. I turn my head to look at her and the blonde corpsman shrugs. "Part-Betazoid, remember? But even if I wasn't, it's all over your face."

"It's … complicated."

"Love always is. I remember my own husband, Kendrick, nearly got scared off when he found out my mother could tell what he was thinking."

I laugh at that. "Betazoids must make the scariest in-laws in history." I sober up. "I'm his direct superior officer. I'm not allowed to be in a relationship with him. He knows that."

"I know, and you've been trying to keep your attraction on the down-low so that neither of you gets reassigned. But do you really want to always be wondering if you could have something?"

I open my mouth without really knowing what I'm going to say but my combadge chirps and saves me the trouble. "Kanril."

"Captain, this is Korekh. Please come to Deflector Control immediately."

"Copy that; I'm on my way."

* * *

I arrive in the ruins of the control room. Shrapnel and six colors of blood spatter the starboard walls and there's a gaping, blackened hole in the wall on the port side of the room. Dul'krah tosses me an evidence bag as I walk in. I catch it in the air and look inside. It's got some sort of tiny burned and twisted gadget in it. "What's this?"

"Treachery," Dul'krah snarls. "Sabotage. What you are holding is the remains of a detonator that was attached to one-point-three grams of nitrilin explosive."

"That's not enough nitrilin to cause this kind of damage."

Lieutenant McMillan, holding a tricorder over one of the spatter patterns, answers, "It is when the bomb is mounted inside the primary power regulator."

"So, bomb goes off, damages the regulator, EPS conduit overloads and blows, and that causes the deflector to emit a theta-verteron beam?"

Master Chief Systems Engineer Kinlo, an old white-haired Klingon from Bynam's department, shakes her head. "No, that took the extra step of uploading a virus into the control systems to make the dish absorb and emit the extra power."

Biri steps inside from the corridor. "Whoever did this was proficient in engineering but needs a refresher course in subspace physics. Theta-verterons are completely the wrong particle to cause any damage to the wormhole."

"Nitrilin is a Breen compound, Dul'krah," I point out.

"And they sell it to most of the powers in this region," he counters. "The detonator is Cardassian."

"Weak," somebody says, quietly.

"What was that?"

"He said the detonator is Cardassian," the voice of Professor Dukat says.

I spin and grab her by the shirt and push her back out into the corridor, lifting her clear off the floor and slamming her into the wall. "You. Damned. _Phekk'ta_. Spoonhead," I grind out.

"Let go of me!"

"I can't believe I actually entertained the possibility that you were telling the truth, that you really wanted peace."

"Captain, unhand the professor, now!" Dul'krah bellows at me. "I have already cleared Dukat's entire team!"

"Based on what?"

"Based on the computer virus being Bajoran!"

I'm so surprised I just drop Dukat and spin in place. _"What?"_

"As I said earlier, one cannot jump to conclusions in a criminal investigation. Where you see Cardassian treachery, I see a woman who has handpicked her own team and is smart enough to cover her tracks better than this. I consulted with Master Chief Kinlo, the ranking cyberwarfare specialist aboard the _Bajor_, and she confirmed that the computer virus carries none of the common fingerprints of Cardassian computer science. And because I know that our crew, even our considerable Bajoran contingent, would not knowingly endanger this vessel, the only remaining suspects are the representatives of the Center for Science. I have already taken the liberty of confining the uninjured members to quarters and will be interrogating each one in turn."

"Intruders. Weak," somebody says again.

"What?"

"Captain, what are you hearing?" Biri asks.

"Somebody said we're weak. Oh, no." I slap my combadge. "Kanril to bridge. Anything on sensors?"

"I'm having trouble reading through this coral stuff with just passives," Wiggin answers.

"Tell Park to warm up the engines and get ready to run. I'll be there shortly." I start to leave, but then I stop, reach down and offer the professor a hand up. "I'm sorry," I tell her. "I shouldn't have—"

"I forgive you. Go worry about your ship."

* * *

I get to the bridge and Tess barks, "Captain on deck!"

"Carry on. What's our status?"

"We're powered up, ready to move on your say-so," Park responds.

"Take us out to the cavern entrance. I want to get a clearer look at the area."

"Conn, aye. Coming about." The view on the screen slowly wheels to the right.

"Captain," Wiggin suddenly says, "I'm picking up an anomalous energy signature directly above us!"

"Battle stations! Shields up!" The "sky" turns to fire and the planetoid vanishes around us. "Report!"

"Shields holding, 82 percent," Tess announces. "Switching viewscreen to tactical plot. Oh, _frak_."

"Wiggin," I ask, "just how many Undine ships is that?"

"I count two _Tethys_-class, six _Vila_-class, eighteen _Dromias_-class, over eighty _Nicor_-class, and two sets of _Dactylus _-class planet-busters." He pauses. "We're boned," he adds.

Prophets, I'm sorry. I failed.

Or not. Flaming Death seems to have a scheduling conflict. "Why aren't they attacking?" Tess asks to my right. "They've got us dead to rights: we're well within firing range and we've got a cinder's chance in the Northern Wastes of taking them all out."

"Captain," Ensign Esplin says from the comms station, "I don't think they're the Undine we're used to."

"What are you talking about, Ensign?" Biri asks.

"Well, they look different."

"No, they don't," I say.

"Yes, ma'am, they do. The colors are different."

"No, they're plain yellow, just like they always are."

"Ma'am, I don't know how else to describe it. The striations in the skin of that _Vila_ are _ssaurritetla_ and point forward. They ought to be colored _ssuettanet_ and pointing aft."

The universal translator's apparently having problems with those words. "Biri, do you know what she's saying?"

The Trill nods, slowly smiling. "Reptilian eyes. Captain, Esplin's a _Saurian_! She's seeing them partly in ultraviolet! Computer, I want a screenshot of that _Vila_-class under ultraviolet light, side-by-side with the same of one of the _Vila_-class ships encountered in the Jenolan Dyson sphere."

Chirp. "Processing."

Biri's screen flicks to a new image and she throws it up on the main viewscreen. "I'll see to it you get a commendation for this, Ensign." The core design of the ship is identical, give or take a few minor variations in tentacle shape (understandable with biotech), but the coloration is very different.

"Esplin," I ask, "is that true of all of them?"

Esplin nods. Biri suggests, "Captain, we may be dealing with a different tribe or clan, or something to that effect. We know from the Terradome incident that the Undine are at least a little factionalized. We may have an opportunity here."

"'Enemies become allies against the coming tide,'" I recall. I stand and straighten the hem of my jacket. "Esplin, open a hailing channel, all frequencies."

"Channel open."

"This is Captain Kanril Eleya of the United Federation of Planets. We mean you no harm, but we will defend ourselves if necessary. I would like to speak to whomever is in charge."

There's silence for a moment, and then I'm knocked to the floor by a deafening voice in my head. _INTRUDER! WEAK!_

Tess dashes over to me as I roll on the floor, clutching my head against the pain, screaming. The bridge vanishes into black nothingness around me and I'm faced with an Undine, over three meters tall and as ugly as they come. _WHO ARE YOU?_

"Kanril Eleya, Captain, USS _Bajor_, Federation Starfleet, serial number November-Whiskey-2403-4233-2015-4114."

The Undine's hand snaps out and grabs me by the neck, lifting me off the ground. Its head, as big as my entire torso, sits in my face. _WEAK_, its mind-voice bellows as I struggle with the hand.

"We're stronger … than you think. Kanril Eleya, Captain, USS _Bajor_, Federation Starfleet—AARGH!"

_YOU ARE WEAK. YOU ARE COWARDLY. YOU ATTACK IN THE DARK. YOU KILL HATCHLINGS._

"What … are you talking about?"

The Undine's head draws back, the patterns in its eyes shifting. The pressure on my throat loosens. _UNCOMPREHENDING. CONFUSED. WE WILL SHOW YOU._

Images flash through my mind. An _Intrepid_-class starship, firing at Undine vessels. A Gorn _Tuatara_-class cruiser, bombarding a pool on one of those reefs. Tiny creatures that look like small Undine, fleeing the pool and burning under the guns of a _Negh'Var_-class battlecruiser.

"When did this begin?"

_LONG AGO. WE WERE NOT YET BORN._

"Could you be more specific?"

_LONG AGO._

"Try. Here, read my mind. I'm thinking about how my people measure time. Try to work it out. GHAAA!"

_STRONGER THAN ANTICIPATED. STILL WEAK. IT BEGAN THIRTY-ONE OF YOUR 'YEARS' AGO. WE DESTROYED ALL. THEY PERSISTED. SO WE KILL._

"So why didn't you destroy _us_?"

_YOU ARRIVED. YOU DID NOT ATTACK. YOU HID. WEAK. AFRAID._

"Some among my people say admitting fear is a sign of courage."

_YOU ARE DEFIANT. A STRONG WILL. YOU ARE STILL WEAK._

"Whatever. Here's the truth. We did not attack you. We _never_ attacked you. Thirty-one years ago we were barely aware of this realm, of fluidic space."

_LIES!_

"You can read my mind. You know I'm telling the truth."

_YOU BELIEVE YOUR LIES TO BE TRUTH?_

"They're not lies. You're being misled. And where do you get off accusing _us_ of attacking in the dark? Pot, kettle."

_WE DID NOT. WE FOUGHT TO PROTECT. WE DEFENDED._ Now images of Undine ships attacking the attackers, blowing them away with gusto, rush through my head.

"You tried to destroy us from the inside."

_SHOW US._

I focus on my memories of the Undine playing Ambassador Sokketh. Briefings showing the extent of Undine infiltration in the Federation. The attack on Earth, when Commander E'genn revealed himself and I burned him down.

_WE DID NOT DO THIS. THEY ARE WEAK! COWARDLY! SHAMEFUL! BENEATH CONTEMPT!_

"I suspected as much," I say, smiling despite his grip on my neck. "You Undine are no more united than we are. I can tell you who is responsible for the attacks on your hatchlings."

_TELL!_

"I want something in exchange. I want you to get your house in order and deal with your 'weak, shameful' kin. And I want something else. I want your help defeating _them_ when the time comes."

_TELL!_ The Undine's pressure on my throat increases.

"They call themselves … the Iconians," I gasp out. "They want us … fighting each other. We are strong, you are strong. But divided and fighting each other, we're _both_ weak."

_WEAK! COWARDLY! SHAMEFUL! KILLERS OF HATCHLINGS! WEAK! BENEATH CONTEMPT! THE WEAK WILL PERISH!_

The Undine lets go of me and I fall into the blackness below its feet, and I'm back on the bridge with Doctor Maela standing over me with a tricorder. "She's waking up. Vital signs returning to normal."

I sit up and spit blood out of my mouth. "_Phekk_, I bit my tongue."

Wiggin announces, "In case anyone's interested, the Undine ships are moving out. They're leaving."

"Good, maybe—AARGH!"

_WE WILL COME. WE WILL FIGHT._

I fall back down again. "Tess, permission to pass out again?"

* * *

I wake up. Unfamiliar ceiling. It's a sickbay, but not the one on the _Bajor_. A female Paradan in a Starfleet uniform walks over to me. "Captain, you are awake."

"Who are you? Where am I?"

"I am Dr. Capadan, chief medical officer of Deep Space 9. You are in the starbase hospital. You have been asleep for two days. Minor neurological damage."

I turn to my left. Gaarra is in the bed next to mine. He's got an IV in his arm and bandages underneath his hospital gown. But he's alive, and he's awake. "Hey," he says, smiling at me.

"Hey, yourself." I reach out and take his hand.

"Ow."

"You okay?"

"Back's still a little tender. And … I'm not breathing so good. New lungs."

Tess, Captain Kurland, and Professor Dukat walk in and we quickly let go of each other's hands. "Welcome back to the land of the living, Kanril," Kurland says.

"How did we get back?"

"Bynam's people got the deflector fixed and opened us a hole back to realspace. We came out in the Idran system and just came home through the wormhole."

"Did you ever find out who set that bomb?"

"It was Ameno Idras, one of the engineers from the Bajoran Center for Science," Kurland answers.

"The guy who dropped that phase coupler before we started the tests?" Gaarra asks.

Tess shrugs. "I guess; I wasn't there. Anyway, Dul'krah pretty much just glared at him for ten seconds or so and he couldn't confess fast enough. It was beautiful, you could've sold tickets. Militia raided his house when we got back and _apparently_ he's a Pah-Wraith cultist. And it doesn't hurt that his mother was raped and murdered by a Cardassian _dalin_ during the Occupation."

"Trying to frame the professor?" I infer.

The Cardassian woman nods sadly. "Does it ever end? This cycle of violence? We kill you, you kill us, and nobody wins."

"You have no idea how appropriate that remark is," I say, and look to Kurland. "Captain, any word on Undine activity?"

He gives me a confused look. "All quiet, last I heard. Latest flash from the DJC says the Undine haven't made any moves at all in the last couple of days. Analysts think they're trying to regroup for another push."

"Maybe. Or maybe I managed to do some good when we were in fluidic space."

"What are you talking about, Captain?" Gaarra asks.

I start laughing. "I yelled at them and they went away."

"The _Undine_?" Kurland asks. "Captain, I think you just signed yourself up for an appointment with the station counselor."

"Respectfully, sir," Tess says, "I think you mean Starfleet Intelligence. I don't think she's joking."

Kurland snorts. "Hell, with my luck, she _is_ telling the truth." Gaarra laughs at this, then starts coughing.

"All right," Dr. Capadan says, "I must insist, the captain and Commander Reshek need to rest, and I still have a few tests to run."

"Always do as the doctor orders," Dukat remarks. "Come on, I'm buying." The three of them file out and Capadan fiddles with a few settings on the console on Gaarra's headboard, then leaves.

I look over at him. Most of his beard is stubble, either burned off in the explosion or shaved when they were working on him. It'll take weeks to grow back. But he's smiling. "Captain, I—"

"Gaarra, when I heard you were injured, I nearly got myself removed from command trying to come see you."

"Well, you're seeing me now."

"Yes. Yes, I am." I take his hand again, running my thumb over the calluses. "And I didn't care. Tess would've had me thrown out of the service, and I didn't care. I had to _force_ myself to care. And now, I don't have to care anymore. We're out of danger, and we're alone and—and I love you, is what I'm trying to say."

He shifts in the bed and rolls up on his side. "I know. I love you, too." He brings my hand up to his mouth and kisses it. "All I can do for now. We'll worry about Tess after my back heals and I can breathe again."

"Sounds good to me."

THE END

* * *

**Author's Notes:** Part of the genesis of this chapter came out of something my buddy worffan101 said one of the times the "Janeway's a traitor" argument came up on the STO forums, coupled with my annoyance with the brain-hurtingly stupid actions of the Undine in the official storyline. Worffan noted on the Terradome thing (VOY: "In the Flesh") that the mere fact that the Undine _have_ factions makes them more human than the Borg. That got me thinking about how these factions might be distinguishable visually. They're not humanoid, so why would they see in the normal humanoid visual spectrum? And I'd already established that the usual communications officer on the _Bajor_ was a Saurian, which are reptiles, which means they can see part of the ultraviolet spectrum (I checked).

And then we get to where this other group of Undine might prefer a straight fight instead of all this sneaking around. Sneaking is for weaklings, and we know the Undine hate the weak, _et voila_.

On a completely different topic, Eleya's "unfamiliar ceiling" comment was meant as an _Evangelion_ reference. I've also been trying to write Dul'krah a little bit like Teal'c from _Stargate SG-1_ ever since I created him, and that plus this storyline meant I got an opportunity to use Teal'c's "interrogation by death glare" technique.


End file.
